The LG Enlighten is a decent budget Android device, especially if you want a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, but it really needs a better camera.

The LG Enlighten (free with two-year contract) is a solid budget Android smartphone for Verizon Wireless customers that like to text and email. Some of the design decisions are questionable, and strangely, it drops down in screen resolution compared to its predecessor, the LG Ally (3.5 stars). But for the most part, the Enlighten handset will serve you well if you're looking for a basic smartphone with a hardware QWERTY keyboard.

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Design, Keyboard, and Call QualityThe Enlighten measures 4.5 by 2.3 by 0.58 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.5 ounces; that's a little heavy, but not terrible given the large keyboard. It's made of dark grey plastic, with a soft touch back cover. The 3.2-inch, 320-by-480 pixel capacitive touch screen is bright and colorful, and typical for a budget Android phone, although it's considerably worse than the LG Ally's 480-by-800 pixel panel was. It's still fine for basic tasks, and the small size is OK, since you won't be typing on the screen much.

The slide-out, four-row QWERTY keyboard is quite roomy; it features oversized, well-separated plastic keys that depress with a subtle click. LG dedicated the top row to number keys, so I had to dance around the space bar in the bottom row with my thumbs to hit certain letters. Whether that bothers you or not is a matter of personal preference, though, as it's nice to have dedicated number keys.

The Enlighten is a dual-band EV-DO Rev. A (850/1900 MHz) device with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi support. It also works as a 3G mobile hotspot with the appropriate data plan. Like many Verizon phones, the Enlighten sounded excellent on voice calls; crisp, clear, and bright, with a ton of available gain for use in noisy environments outdoors. Callers said I sounded very clear as well. Reception was average.

Calls also sounded clear through a Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset ($129, 4 stars), and voice dialing worked fine over Bluetooth without training. The speakerphone sounded somewhat distorted but went plenty loud for outdoor use. Battery life was excellent at 8 hours and 22 minutes of talk time.

Apps and OSAndroid 2.3 (Gingerbread) is on board. LG also bumped the processor up from 600MHz to 800MHz; between that and Gingerbread, the Enlighten feels quite responsive. The Enlighten should work with most of the 250,000+ third-party apps available in the Android Market, thanks to the stock screen resolution and relatively untouched Gingerbread OS. That includes Facebook and Twitter; given the hardware keyboard and speedy interface, this is a fine machine for social networking mavens.

There are seven customizable home screens you can swipe between. LG has altered Android's standard app drawer layout to force mandatory folders on you; if you're OCD about icons, this is not your phone. There's also some non-removable bloatware. Verizon includes a Data Usage app that tracks your monthly allotment in real time, which is helpful. The Enlighten also offers all of Android's usual benefits, including free, voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS navigation, robust email handling, and a powerful WebKit browser.

Multimedia, Camera, and ConclusionsA standard-sized 3.5mm headphone jack sits on top of the phone, and there's a MicroSD memory card slot beneath the back cover. My 32GB SanDisk card worked fine, and Verizon tosses in a 2GB card to get you started. There's also 161MB of free internal storage. Music tracks sounded fine through Samsung Modus HM6450 Bluetooth headphones ($99, 4 stars), and the music player app was responsive and displayed large album art thumbnails. Standalone videos played well in full screen mode, but anything 720p or higher was out; the Enlighten didn't transcode them on the fly for the lower-res screen.

The 3.2-megapixel auto-focus camera has no flash. Test photos were disappointing. Outdoor shots in sunlight were OK, aside from some smudged details around tree leaves. But indoor shots were a disaster: way too dark, with blown out highlights around windows and an overall soft focus. The slow auto-focus adds roughly two seconds to each shot, and requires that you hold down the button the entire time to actually take each photo. The camcorder recorded usable 640-by-480 pixel (standard VGA) videos that averaged 14 frames per second, although actual frame rates were all over the map depending on how much light was available. Again, indoor areas were a murky mess, even with the room lighting cranked.

As long as you're not too demanding and have a separate camera, The LG Enlighten is a fine choice for a lower-priced phone. If you're shopping for an Android phone with a QWERTY keyboard on Verizon, though, take a look at the Samsung Stratosphere ($149.99, 3.5 stars). The Stratosphere gives you a faster processor, better camera, nicer screen, and super-fast 4G LTE. Yes, it costs $150 more, but think of that as only $6.25/month on your two-year contract.

Jamie Lendino is the Editor-in-Chief of ExtremeTech.com, and has written for PCMag.com and the print magazine since 2005. Recently, Jamie ran the consumer electronics and mobile teams at PCMag, and before that, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Smart Device Central, PCMag's dedicated smartphone site, for its entire three-year run from 2006 to 2009. Prior to PCMag, he was a contributing editor for Laptop and mediabistro.com. His writing has also been published in Popular Science, Consumer Reports, Electronic Musician, and Sound and Vision, as well as...
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